Dying Naturally - Environmental Influencer
How to Respect Your Body, Land, and Deceased Naturally
Learn How to Advocate for a Low Carbon Footprint
Nearly 700,000 women lose their husbands each year and will be widows for an average of 14 years”-U.S. Bureau of the Census (1999). The American funeral industry today has influenced how families bury their loved ones and due to rising burials, many families are opting for cremation.
Currently, burial standards harm the environment through embalming fluids, hardwood caskets, and/or concrete vaults. Preserving open space, under-scoring ecological sensitivity of burial practices, and providing social acceptance of death as a natural process will support land restoration for future generations.
Natural burials provide communities a new opportunity to use age-old customs, promote rural conservation and urban open space, return nutrients to the land, and ability to conserve land, create open space, and restore natural habitats. In urban areas, conservation cemeteries can provide the bereaved a place for nature, and recreation, provide habitat for wildlife, and modern ways to combat grief.
Long-term, conservation burials have the potential of financing other land preserves and are cheaper than conventional burials.
Conservation cemeteries can accommodate multiple uses, bringing back “life”, longevity and sustainability.
City planners, governmental agencies, and land trusts are in a unique position to drive change.
What You Can Do
Start a Memorial Garden
Aloe Vera
Bamboo
Banana
Basil
Coconut
Desert Rose
Garlic grass
Hibiscus
Lemon Grass
Milkweed
Moringa
Neem
Oregano
Pepper
Pigeon Pea
Spinach
Sunflowers
Open a Cemetery
Proposal Example
Please feel free to use this example to build on your proposal.
Who?
XYZ is a community-based organization for the purpose of saving land, nature, and resources while honoring our ancestors.
Our programs and services focus on a range of humanitarian, environmental, and creative initiatives. XYZ works with integrity, responsibility, and social commitment - generating a culture of development, sustainability, and imagination.
What?
XYZ will develop an educational and healing nature center. This nature center will act as a nursery to include the farming of medicinal plants, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, flowers, and ornamental plants.
Our focal point is generating a connection to our ancestors, land, and future while offering creative outlets to mourn. Our goals are to create a culture of planting and self-consumption, create a network that fosters the culture of planting and healing, link scientific research institutions with fieldwork, integrate industry, governments, the health sector, and social organizations, join efforts, and organize workshops.
Why?
“Vamos Afuera” means “let’s go outside, get active, get our hands dirty… and plant”. The American funeral industry today has influenced how families bury their loved ones and due to rising costs, many families are opting for direct cremation. Industry common burial standards harm the environment through embalming fluids, hardwood caskets, and/or concrete vaults.
Preserving open space, under-scoring ecological sensitivity of burial practices, and providing social acceptance of death as a natural process will support land sustainability for future generations.
Phase 1 (2019 - 2020) - complete
Obtain land for the beginning stages
Phase 2 ( January 2021 - April 2021) - in-progress
Partner with community leaders, artists, musicians, and nonprofits
Develop a seed-saving bank
Start construction on a nursery incorporating local resources
Start seedlings
Begin fundraising efforts
Start and develop a comprehensive horticultural database that can be studied, sold, or given away.
Phase 3 (May 2021 - August 2021)
Creation and rollout of workshops and programs
Beginning stages of a butterfly garden
Start construction of agricultural office
Phase 4 (September 2021 - December 2021)
Completion of comprehensive horticultural database
Completion of the butterfly garden
The agricultural office will be in progress and near complete
Continued oversight of nursery, programs, and outcomes.
Phase 5 (2021 - 2022)
Community awareness and partnership development
Link scientific research institutions with fieldwork
Continued oversight of nursery, programs, and services
Our programs will deliver the following outcomes:
Conservation
Community Involvement
Provide grief awareness
Memorialize the dead
Drive a decrease in conventional burials
Demonstrate better management for open space
Redevelop family-directed services, through community service projects.
Infect communities with inspiration, knowledge, hope, and a sense of caring.
Incorporate modern technology to connect with the death community
We aim to reconnect communities with nature and conserve open space.
